Books give us insight into the lives of others, broaden our worldview, show us how to be better people, and help us to not feel alone. Here are some books that have changed the world.
Silent Spring revealed to a wide audience how indiscriminate application of pesticides and other chemicals polluted our streams, damaged bird and animal populations, and caused severe medical problems for humans. Silent Spring was met with fierce…
The Jungle exposed the horrific working conditions in the meat-packing industry. Upton Sinclair's description of the processing and selling of contaminated meat shocked the public and led to new federal food safety laws, including the Pure Food and…
Frederick Douglass wrote his Narrative while enslaved, and its publication provided the funds to purchase his freedom. The world hadn't heard many real-life stories from former slaves, and Douglass' book increased interest in abolition and righteous…
How the Other Half Lives prompted the first significant New York legislation to curb poor conditions in tenement housing. As a work of photojournalism, it revealed to a wealthy audience the life of the poor in New York City tenements, child poverty…
The Death and Life of Great American Cities offers a strong critique of 1950s U.S. urban planning policy, which the author thought responsible for the declining quality of city life. Jacobs championed instead a community-based approach to city…
Fans of The Fountainhead consider the novel timeless, and celebrate its themes of individual freedom and the heroism of the creator. Although Rand’s political preferences didn’t match that of the electorate at the time it was published, the…
George Orwell's dystopian novella follows the life of Winston Smith, a low-ranking member of 'the Party', in a world where television screens watch you, and everyone spies on everyone else. The warnings issued by Orwell through 1984 are frequently…
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee came out during the Vietnam War, at the height of the American Indian Movement. The 1970s were a time when there was a lot of disillusionment with the American ideal, and many people participated in movements like AIM…
John Steinbeck drew his characters in the Grapes of Wrath from the stories of people he had interviewed in the migrant camps in California, creating an empathetic and powerful narrative about the flood of families and individuals driven from the…
All Quiet on the Western Front is a novel about the futility of war and the lived experience of ordinary people dying in the interests of profit and power. The film version is regarded as one of the most effective antiwar movies ever made, and both…
Between 1935 and 1943, Farm Security Administration photographers produced nearly eighty thousand pictures of life in Depression-era America. This remains the largest documentary photography project ever undertaken. While Picturing a Nation is a new…
Go Ask Alice is about a teenager who develops a drug addiction and runs away from home. Attributed to "Anonymous", the book is written in diary format, and was originally presented as being the "real diary" of the unnamed protagonist. It became a…
Heard of Watergate? This is the tell-all book written by Washington Post journalists Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, which offers detailed accounts of secret meetings with their informant Deep Throat (who was later revealed to be a ranking official…
Written in 1898, the Communist Manifesto got off to a slow start but over time grew in influence. Today, its impact is universally acknowledged and it remains one of the most read and referenced texts ever written. By 1950, almost half the world's…
Who would have thought the beak size of finches could be so important? Through the process of carefully documenting variation in species across different islands in the Galapagos, Darwin formulated a theory that shook the political, cultural and…
